


A Change in Scenery

by Torched22



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Makeover, Nightmares, Touchy-Feely, Transformation, hehe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:54:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22661311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Torched22/pseuds/Torched22
Summary: Malcolm has no 'real' reason to go see his father, but he does.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	A Change in Scenery

Malcom’s hand shakes just thinking about Claremont. Something squirms in his guts and he has to shove down the urge to panic. It’s funny when his therapist reassures him that panic attacks are short lived because his entire life is one long, drawn out panic attack.

It’s February and the weather mirrors his father’s intensity. One snow storm after another, after another, until the city has been erased with white-out snow. Huddled masses cross the street in herds for warmth, the heat of their combined breath existing in clouds that quickly dissipate. 

He looks at those nameless strangers and envies them. If only he could wake up and be somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t broken. 

The ride to Claremont feels less like a drive and more like a death march towards the gallows. He has no reason to be here. He has no right to be here. And yet, the car finally rolls to a stop and he steps out into the tundra-like landscape. 

There is no case to bring to his father, no mystery to be solved. He’s not sure how he can justify being here to himself, to his father, to Gil... He can see the older man in his mind’s eye, expression dark with disapproval, unspoken questions forming a lump in his throat. He’d probably ask Malcolm if he was a glutton for punishment, but that answer was obvious. 

Cracking his neck, taking a breath, Malcolm signed in and then began his trek through the bowels of the institution. He came to his father’s door, the same door that hung in his nightmares. Blood red. Bolted shut. Flashes of a chest, shut but not bolted. A body inside, losing its grip on life. Caged animal. 

That’s why he was here. The nightmares. Not necessarily of the girl in the box, just nightmares in general. Sure, she was in them a lot. But lately, they had been flooded with the feral grin of his father. And rather than stick to the facts, his subconscious was taking dark new twists and turns...like adding blood to the maniacal grin of Dr. Whitly, the thick red dripping like liquid rubies from his lying lips, down his unruly beard. 

In Malcolm’s sweat soaked dream, Martin had shed his shackles. They slipped from his body like snakes, clattering to the floor and winding up around Malcolm, their metal flesh coiling around his lithe form. In a panic, he lifts his hands, but they’re connected to his waist. He moves to run but he’s chained to the wall like wild creature. The problem is the real predator is before him. His father saunters towards him, surveying his prize, scalpel in one hand and cloth in another. 

His body has a visceral reaction to the notion of being drugged. He can already smell the chloroform, feel it clinging to his tongue, wrapping around his brainstem in a whisp and squeezing until everything goes black. Tears form at his eyes and his voice is high and tight like splintering glass as he pleads with the doctor.

He fears him. He loves him. The latter revelation an unspoken thing, a stain upon his soul. He utters it to no one, but Martin seems to know regardless. His eyes are crinkled at the corners, sweetness and pity mixed and clinging to his soothing words; none of the harsh anger or clinical detachment that Malcolm suspects few have witnessed and lived to tell.

“Malcolm? Come back to me my boy…” the words urge, and Malcolm feels like he’s wading through water, back towards the shore.

Reality warps – falls away and reforms - and now things are back as they should be. Martin is the one chained to the wall, concern splashed across his features, staring at Malcolm who is four feet into the room and across the red line.

Hallucination meeting reality feels like the jolted clap of a car crash. He doesn’t recall actually entering the room and Martin’s solid hands are on his wrists.

This is real, right? It ought to be. The picture around him is more grounded than the ones in his nightmares. Except...his father is at the end of his rope, staring at him intently, concern etched into every line on his face. Even more jarring, his hands are a solid reminder of his existence. He doesn’t look like he normally does and the weight of his hands feels so real... the change catches Malcolm off guard. Why would his mind make up such a drastic change?

“Yes, this is real...son...” Martin’s thumbs are rubbing circles on his bony wrists and the profiler finds himself gravitating towards him. He must have spoken his question aloud. 

God, he hated the way his father was looking at him. Staring as if he were looking for physical cracks, the places where Malcolm’s psyche fractured and threatened to give way. If the surgeon found those places, would he press his thumbs into them just to be the one who had the honor of breaking his precious boy?

“Come back to me,” his gravelly voice pleaded. Malcolm obeyed, blinking several times and fixing his gaze on the face before him. He swallowed thickly and fear shot down his spine as he realized that his father’s hands were on either side of his neck. He should be scared, but he only felt grounded. 

“God, Malcolm, what’s going on?” 

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” the young man replied with an unsteady smile. The kind of smile that made people shy away from him, cancel coffee dates, disappear from his life. 

“I’m fine...I’m sorry...I just - had a moment there.” 

“I could see that. You wouldn’t even respond to me when you entered the room,” his lips were twisted in a frown. 

“What’s wrong dad, worried about your ‘precious boy?’” The fingers at his neck pressed in harder, until he could feel his pulse jumping against the digits. At first, he thought that Martin was mad, until he realized his mistake. 

“You called me dad...” he said with awe. 

Malcolm swallowed again, feeling the constrict of those digits digging into the thread of his muscles. It was also the first time...in a long time...that they had touched. 

Beneath the rising tide of panic, Malcolm quickly took several steps back, returning to safety in front of the red line. He tried not to focus on the way Martin’s face fell, his fingers twitching with emptiness. 

“You look...different.” The final word tumbled off his lips and fell around them wrong. 

“Do you like it?” Martin smiled, lifting his hands to run through his newly cut hair. Gone were the wild curls and unruly beard. His hair was neatly trimmed and his face was clean shaven. 

The change was drastic. 

It turned something hard and cold to liquid inside Malcolm. Now when his father gave that villainous smile...it was no longer unsettling but charismatic. His appearance lacked the ‘crazy’ vibe and he could so clearly see the charismatic surgeon within. A man who could have started a cult or taken over the city - maybe the world. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you clean-shaven.” 

“Ah yes,” he rubbed at his face. “It wasn’t really my decision was it?” 

“What do you mean?” his brows gathered in confusion.

“Isn’t that why you’re here? To see me off?” 

“What?” Malcolm was stepping closer once again, not even aware his feet were moving.

“I’m being moved to Rikers.”

“What?” dread erupted in his chest and sank like a lead weight down to his toes. “Wh- why?” 

“I’m...I’m sorry Malcolm. I thought you knew.” 

“No. No, I didn’t know.” His whole body was quaking. Martin stepped forward only to feel that damned familiar snap holding him in place. 

“Oh Malcolm,” he tilted his head and held out his hands, desperate to comfort his son. “It’ll be alright my boy.” 

“Why?”

“Why are they moving me?” he sighed deeply. “Apparently...Gil thinks that I manipulated the team on the last case,” he frowned. “Helped the killer escape.” 

Malcolm’s mind was on overdrive, running over the details of the case. The one who got away. His eyes snapped up. “Did you?” 

“Of course not,” Martin sounded exasperated. “You know that all I want is to help you Malcolm. Make you look good. Make you proud.” 

There it was again, that curling grip that shifted in his chest. The words made him feel odd.

“That, coupled with my scuffle at therapy...”

“What? What happened at therapy?” 

“It doesn’t matter now, does it? They’re taking me. I think Gil gave Jessica the idea and she pulled some serious purse strings to make it happen. You know the circles she travels in. Or...travelled in.”

“No, why would mom...?”

Everything suddenly clicked into place. He recalled a conversation from the time that the very case in question was occurring between he and his mother. She expressed her disapproval at Malcolm’s visiting Martin. Said something about it being more than just cases. That he seemed obsessed. And the more he visited, the more ‘unhinged,’ he appeared. The word stuck like a dagger into his side and twisted in his flesh whenever he recalled the moment. There was pity in her eyes and frustration on her lips. He felt an anger like none other surge in his ribs and threaten to spill from his mouth. 

“And here you thought I was the manipulative one,” Martin chuckled. 

His son just stared at him in abject horror. “How can you make jokes at a time like this? They’re dragging you off to Rikers!” 

His father licked his bottom lip, biting it a little. It was one of the very few tells the doctor had. He was worried too. “I’ll be fine,” he soothed. “Granted, I’m not sure how I’ll fare in the roommate department...” 

Malcolm was pacing, breathing heavily, his hand on his face. This couldn’t be happening. 

“At least I got a haircut out of it. I do miss the beard though,” his hands went to his face and the tinge of sadness in his voice made Malcolm want to...do something...cry or scream or move closer or run away or all of the above.

“No. No, no, no, I won’t let them take you.” A sound reached his ears in response, it was a sort of ‘hmmm.’ 

“That’s sweet Malcolm, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do.” It cut him so deeply to see his son so distraught. And yet, it gave the doctor immense satisfaction that he even cared this much to begin with.

“If you didn’t know about the transfer...why did you come today?” 

Malcolm’s mind used this opportunity to provide him with a flash of his own dreams. His father, looming above him, pinning him down. He was helpless. Should be scared, but he wasn’t. 

His night terrors had reached a fever pitch and he reasoned that if he confronted his father, maybe had a discussion about the subconscious, that it would quiet his demons. But that didn’t matter now, did it?

“And don’t tell me it doesn’t matter now.” 

His gray blue eyes locked onto the man before him. It chilled him to the bone how easy it was for the killer to get inside his head. Maybe that’s why Malcolm was such a good profiler...maybe that’s why he could so easily get inside of killer’s minds. Because there was one living in his own.

“I just...” his words fell away, voice high and tight with unshed tears. 

“Please come here,” he held his arms out, chains clanking as he did so. 

His chest was tightening unbearably, physically hurting. They couldn’t take him away. He would get killed in gen pop. Or kill someone. What if he got beaten up? In a flash, he pictured strange hands on his father’s body and couldn’t help the strangled sound that came out of his throat. Eyes closed, he realized that he was in Martin’s grasp, his body shaking more violently now.

“It’ll be fine. I promise.” 

It was a lie. It already wasn’t fine.

“You can visit me whenever you want. I just won’t be able to call you as much. I’m already setting up bribes so that I’ll be able to talk to you alone. Public visiting centers aren’t really my style. Well, none of it is,” his grasp tightened as he recalled his early days in the system. 

“They shouldn’t be taking you from here. You need psychiatric...” the word ‘help’ hung on his lips like a broken sign. 

“Yes, well, some believe that they’ve done all they can and that there’s little room left for improvement. Apparently my shrinks think that I’ve shrunk them more than the other way around.” 

“You probably have,” Malcolm huffed a laugh through his tears. 

The door at his back was being unlocked and opened. He didn’t want to let go, but the other man’s hands fell first. 

“It’s time to go Doctor Whitly.” 

Malcolm’s face was covered in tear tracks, cheeks wet. Martin swiped some away with a thumb, cupping his face. At first the touch was light, but then his thumb dug in. He tilted his head down and stared intently at his son. 

“It’ll be fine. I promise,” he repeated with more determination, eyes boring holes into his son’s soul. “I promise.” 

And with that, Malcolm was ushered out of the room on shaky legs.


End file.
